Economic Inequality: It's Far Worse Than You Think - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/economic-inequality-it-s-far-worse-than-you-think <comment><USER2> The point of the article is that the meritocratic system in this country is broken. In part this is because we have systematically transferred wealth out of the bottom to the top. For example, focusing on tax cuts that benefit high income individuals while cutting support for public colleges. These two things are usually done at different times with tax cuts usually to stimulate the economy and spending cuts coming to reign in budget imbalances. The result is that you could work your way through college in the 1960's by working about 20 hours a week. Now you'd have to work 40+ hours a week to pay tuition at a public university. The difference income throughout someone's working life between a college degree and no college degree is about 1,000,000 dollars. So the middle and lower middle income people don't see the benefits of tax cuts but they bear the burden of college tuition increases. And their long term earning potential suffers. And the country as a whole suffers because we have a less well educated work force.

You can repeat this pattern with a whole host of other programs and issues. For example, the minimum wage is still behind where it needs to be if it were adjusted for inflation. We're becoming a casino culture where people keep playing the game because they believe they're going to be the ones that turn out okay. For the most part, your ability to leave your social class is pretty close to zero, with the rich staying rich because their wealth can insulate them against bad decisions. The only real mobility for most people has been down.

<comment><USER3> I'd build on that to point out that the systematic transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top is not something that "we're doing", but simply the natural product of capitalism. It doesn't require an evil mustache twirler sitting in a dimly list room scheming about how he's going to systematically conduct a massive wealth transfer. Wealth transfer is the natural result of any system that rewards the deployment of capital with more capital.

There exist lawmakers that focus on cutting taxes on the rich and reducing access to education, health care, and economic opportunity. While they are helping to widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots, they're unnecessary--the gap would widen with or without them.

<comment><USER4> _Wealth transfer is the natural result of any system that rewards the deployment of capital with more capital._

That's not what capitalism does, otherwise the Webvan investors would be massively wealthy.

It rewards _effective_ deployment of capital with more capital. And it often rewards ineffective deployment of capital with less of it. So you can have massive transfers of wealth from "side to side", not necessarily from bottom to top.

<comment><USER5> Sure - but "effective" here is essentially a random variable, and the central limit theorem does the rest.

"Wealth transfer" isn't transfer to/from particular individuals. As a group, the wealthiest will tend to accumulate wealth faster than everyone else. Furthermore, it may be possible for individuals to enter/leave this class, but it gets less likely the further you are from the dividing line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> And, it's only going to get worse while [1] 39% of Americans either believe they are already among the top 1% or believe that they one day will be. If your mentality is one of "Don't tax the top because that's me (or will be)", you're going to constantly vote against your own economic self-interest, and continue to support policies that help the real rich get ultra-rich.

1\. [http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of- hop...](http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-hope-over- self-interest.html)

<comment><USER6> _39% of Americans either believe they are already among the top 1% or believe that they one day will be_

And how many people will actually be in the top 1% of earners at least once?

EDIT: 12% [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/opinion/sunday/from- rags-t...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/opinion/sunday/from-rags-to- riches-to-rags.html)

 _What's more, 39 percent of Americans will spend a year in the top 5 percent of the income distribution_

Not that far off.

<comment><USER7> Lots of things can temporarily boost your income by consolidating several years' income into one big payment. Sell a flower shop you built up over 40 years for 150k and you are clearly not doing that well. Gamboling can be a net loss over someone's lifetime and give them one very good year. Even just swapping jobs and seeing getting a few months of saved vacation in one big chunk.

The point is for the 88% of Americans never see the top 1% even after their biggest windfall that's a vast gap. And nothing says 1% is defined by their annual tax returns lifetime earnings adjusted for age are a much better link to someones finances than what they made last year.

PS: Sure, in theory Bill Gates was not in the top 1% while at Harvard, but his nominal income had little to do with his status. Don't forget his Mother was friends with the CEO of IBM that's serious connections.

<comment><USER8> Wait, where can you save vacation and receive that time as paid as one big chunk?

<comment><USER9> California state law.

<comment><USER10> And non-competition clauses are unenforceable in California. Yet other states wonder why no mater how many tax incentive they give business, silicon valley remains stubbornly in CA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I always feel a number of important metrics are left out, either by accident or on purpose, when people talk about inequality. Most importantly when it comes to wealth itself, by most measures there is a very, very long tail of people with no wealth. 'No wealth' ranges from the most poor, to those living from paycheck to paycheck all the way to those who have as much debt as their assets. Many of these people are fine because, for example, their earnings potential over the next 40 years is good. They are wealthy in things like skills, social connections, etc. and they are certainly not comparable to someone with few skills, bad health and no money. The other issue is the longer term earning potential of top earners. Apart from the fact that companies are bigger and more global and that 'hits' can be bigger (like Kesha selling more records than The Beatles), the average tenure of a CEO has also gotten shorter and is around 5-7 years which usually can be described as the prime of their career, while the average worker can be anywhere in their career including eventually being a CEO one day.

<comment><USER10> >while the average worker can be anywhere in their career including eventually being a CEO one day

From the article:

> our indifference lies in a distinctly American cultural optimism. At the > core of the American Dream is the belief that anyone who works hard can move > up economically regardless of his or her social circumstances.

Aside from the factual error in the notion that there's more social mobility in the US than other countries, there is a difference between "anyone can become CEO" and "everyone will become CEO". If antebellum southern plantations had been structured such that one of the slaves might occasionally become the owner, it would not make it acceptable.

<comment><USER12> _there is a difference between "anyone can become CEO" and "everyone will become CEO"_

I favor a system that guarantees equality of opportunity. I do not favor a system that guarantees equality of outcome.

<comment><USER3> Well, neither of those systems exist, so discussing the differences between them is kind of pointless.

EDIT:

See the response by cgearhart in a different thread for links to actual citations. Upvote that user's comment instead of mine.

<comment><USER13> Convenience link to the comment referenced:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9296654](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9296654)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wow, the "ideal" wealth distribution based on what people want is simply nuts. If top quintile owns 35% and bottom two own 25% (perhaps 15% and 10%, respectively)...that means the richest would own 3.5x more than the poorest, on average.

(If you think this makes any sense at all, consider the _median_ American has a net worth of about $45K. Having 3.5x that amount wouldn't allow you to retire, or even own a 3BR house in Minneapolis.)

A person's wealth should (hopefully) increase as they grow older and save more money. It's clear that the responders to this survey didn't account for that at all.

<comment><USER15> Yes, but the _average_ net worth is 301k. It doesn't make any sense to look at median numbers when talking about uneven wealth distribution. Of course the median is going to be very low, that's the whole point!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The fact that someone is rich does not mean he took anything from you, no matter how poor you are. Statements like "If poor people knew how rich rich people are, there would be riots in the streets" are not only stupid but also dangerous.

<comment><USER17> Well, but it also does not mean that he didn't take anything from me.

Generally, the US tax code is designed in such a way that capital begets capital. Put differently, if you make money passively from the money you already have, you pay a lower tax rate then if you haul brick on your back, or teach children.

Is this taking? No, not directly, but indirectly, sure.

<comment><USER18> I would argue that the state is taking, not the rich (which are not the only people with money invested in the market).

<comment><USER19> That would be like arguing your landlord is taking your rent.

<comment><USER18> Not at all. Your relationship with the landlord is voluntary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Every time someone says "X people have a higher net worth than Y% of people COMBINED" I get very, very skeptical. Some net worths are negative. Some net worths are significantly negative. A homeless man has a much higher net worth than 8,000 people who just graduated from medical school with some debt _combined_. Relevant article.[1]

[1] [http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/04/04/stop- adding...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/04/04/stop-adding-up- the-wealth-of-the-poor/)

</comment><comment><USER21> I think the popular conceptualization of economic inequality (effectively, "inequality is suffering") is misleading because it doesn't take marginal utility into account.

What I mean is, take the pizza-dividing example and suppose we have doubled the pizza. The inequality (expressed as the ratio of pizza owned to the available total) would stay the same but those with the smallest part of the divide would be noticeably less hungry than before.

In a world of plenty inequality would not mean suffering. More realistically, inequality would not mean (nearly as much) suffering in a world where a minimum slice of pizza was the birthright of a citizen.

Edit: This line of thinking is seriously flawed when applied to the real world. See drabiega's comment for why. metaphorm mentions some examples of where competitive costs may apply.

<comment><USER22> "...in a world where a minimum slice of pizza was a birthright of a citizen."

We do not remotely live in such a world, or even such a country. (I'm referring to the U.S.)

<comment><USER21> Whether a basic income or even a basic job program is plausible under the current conditions in the US is very debatable (you can find yummyfajitas' criticism here on HN).

What I had in mind with my final remark is more about the future, i.e., "how to handle things when the machines take over".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> You want the economy to be top heavy. You want the best people managing the most money, and you want them to have the strongest incentive for managing it correctly.

When you have 10 billion dollars in capital and you are trying to figure out what to do with it, you want the people managing that money to be top-notch, 0.1% or better. And you want to make sure they have an appropriate amount of personal stake in the game. It's not necessarily _fair_ to the 99% that they aren't given similar opportunities to manage that much wealth, but it's what's healthiest for the economy.

It's also healthy to heavily emphasize education, and make sure every kid is brought to their full potential. It's downright unhealthy to have an intelligent human being caught in a poverty spiral.

My point is that the emphasis should not be on the fact that we are a top- heavy economy. A healthy economy is going to be top heavy, potentially extremely top heavy. The emphasis should be on the bottom, where people are getting completely bottlenecked by their own poverty. The question shouldn't be 'how can we redistribute wealth?'. The question should be 'how can we give every person a proper education' and 'how can we make sure poverty does not get in the way of a person's creativity and potential?'

</comment><comment><USER24> Nothing in the article explains why "economic inequality" is a bad thing. Which seems to be a logical pre-requisite to declaring it to be "worse than you think".

<comment><USER3> It's not necessary. Economic inequality is widely considered a social ill.

<comment><USER24> That's assuming the thing you want to prove. (I'm sure there's a Latin term for that, but I don't remember it.) It's a logical error that Margaret Thatcher blew apart beautifully probably before you were even born. (Bing the video.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The estate tax should be near 100%. We do not need dynasties. I don't mind people making the wealth, but they can't take it with them. It shouldn't just transfer to their children.

<comment><USER26> You haven't quite thought this out. Young parents die too, and children need to be provided for.

<comment><USER27> If you believe in equality of opportunity, parents should not be the main source of provision for children.

Every time someone mentions "who will provide for your children if you don't leave an inheritance behind?" I immediately have to ask, "what about all the children whose parents are not able to leave them an inheritance (ie: most of them)?"

It seems that it is you who have not really thought it out. Here's Adam Smith on the topic btw:

> "A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and > the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can > have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is > quite unnatural." Smith said: "There is no point more difficult to account > for than the right we conceive men to have to dispose of their goods after > death."

[http://budiansky.blogspot.ca/2010/10/adam-smith-thomas- jeffe...](http://budiansky.blogspot.ca/2010/10/adam-smith-thomas-jefferson- and-other.html)

<comment><USER26> Equality of Opportunity as defined legally has nothing to do with taking care of the children.

1) n. a right supposedly guaranteed by both federal and many state laws against any discrimination in employment, education, housing or credit rights due to a person's race, color, sex (or sometimes sexual orientation), religion, national origin, age or handicap.

Most human cultures are built on the nuclear family.. especially when it comes to raising children. I'm not sure what system you propose to replace that..

Adam Smith lived in the clouds. We live in a civilization where we have to consider actual use cases, transitions, exceptions, etc.

<comment><USER27> >> Most human cultures are built on the nuclear family

>> Adam Smith lived in the clouds

>> Family structures of one married couple and their children were present in Western Europe and New England in the 17th century, influenced by church and theocratic governments.[5] With the emergence of proto-industrialization and early capitalism, the nuclear family became a financially viable social unit.[6] The term nuclear family first appeared in the early twentieth century. [...] The concept that a narrowly defined nuclear family is central to stability in modern society has been promoted by familialists who are social conservatives in the United States, and has been challenged as historically and sociologically inadequate to describe the complexity of actual family relations.[8]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_family)

Is this some kind of joke?

<comment><USER26> What are you getting at?

If you have some amazing Utopian plan where everyone has the same opportunities and equal chance to succeed at life regardless of which backwater hellhole they grow up in, please share.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The wealth of the US at times shortly after the second world war came from the broad middle class. Today the wealth of the US is lying in the hands of the top 1% of the society. Something must have been happening in between.

In the European Union there is also a similar trend. There exist studies that today it is much more difficult for somebody coming from lower income (and society) levels to become rich than it was 40 or 50 years ago. There is nearly no exchange anymore happening, because today's rich can rely on the fact that their money will beget more additional money nearly automatically. Also times are over, where many people build their riches from scratch. Most rich people today are rich in the second, third or fourth generation today.

Low taxes on wealth and inheritance are doing their job. But also the fact that earning money by just having (enough) money costs less tax than hard working for money in Europe (in Germany, you will pay for your worked-for money (if you earn enough) up to ~40% on taxes and additionally you have to pay social security fees that can eat up an additional 20% (estimated) of your earnings. For money you got threw having money, you will today come away with 25% flat rate tax.

With such tax laws in action, you could come to the view, that letting work your money for you is more difficult than working in a factory and must be promoted by the state.

</comment><comment><USER29> The problem isn't wealth. The problem is _poverty_.

There isn't much of a practical difference between 1MM and 10MM or 10MM and 100MM. Or even 10K and 100K. It's not that there isn't any difference, it's just that (ignoring extreme scenarios like having to pay medical bills in the US) the difference is mostly a luxury.

But below a certain threshold, it's not a matter of luxury. It's a matter of being able to afford the bare necessities.

I don't make 100K/month. Right now I don't even make 10K/month. To be honest, I'd probably be able to cope (as I have had to in the past) with as little as 1K/month or less. But I don't mind if some investment banker or Fortune 500 CEO makes several orders of magnitude than me.

The problem isn't just that someone who works two full-time jobs can barely afford the absolute minimum of necessities. The problem is that making money is a requirement to have access to these essentials. We don't need more jobs, we need better social care. We don't need to cut rich people's wages, we need to eliminate poor people's reliance on wages to keep them housed, fed, warm, healthy and content (or "maintained" if that sounds less socialist and more business-y).

Minimum wage is a red herring. Minimum wages are (and should be) dictated by economical concerns alone. It's impossible to regulate them. You can dictate numbers, but that doesn't solve the problem they're meant to address.

Minimum wage jobs are not only useless because they can't pay for a living. They're also useless because they generally don't offer any opportunity for personal advancement. If you mop floors at McDonald's for a living, you're likely not going to turn that into a career. If anything, it's a stop-gap, but any effect it will have on your future occupations will likely have nothing to do with the actual tasks you performed (except maybe for a marketing sob-story if you make it big).

So separate the two concerns: give people what they need whether they have a job or not, and pay them whatever is economically sensible for any job they take.

Basic income and/or strong social services are a better solution than always trying to regulate businesses into supplying sufficient wages against market demands. If anything, the latter just encourages businesses to eliminate those minimum wage jobs entirely to reduce unnecessary costs.

You can't compete with technological progress. If you artificially inflate wages, that just makes the humans even less appealing.

<comment><USER13> I'd argue that there's a massive difference between 1MM and 10MM USD. The former is not enough to comfortably retire on at age 30 and heading up a household of 4.

The latter is.

That's a massive qualitative difference, IMO.

<comment><USER30> That's exactly what he said - it's a matter of luxury. Retiring at 30 is a luxury.

<comment><USER13> Extended far enough, so is not starving to death in utter squalor. One person's luxury is another person's normal.

I view retirement as "normal" and it's just a question of when. 30, 40, or 50 - none of those would I define as luxury-due-to-age.

<comment><USER29> I think the mistake is the underlying assumption.

What does it mean to "retire"?

If you mean being able to live comfortably without having to work, I'm arguing (for some definitions of "comfort") that's where you should start in the first place.

If you mean having a house, money in the bank, paying for your hobbies and taking regular vacations overseas, then that's what I'm arguing is a luxury.

Sure, if you define "luxury" as something that goes beyond your goal in life (say, having a reliable amount of savings to afford your lifestyle), then retiring with a yacht at 30 may possibly not be something you'd consider a luxury. But that doesn't change what I said.

I don't view retirement (in any shape or form) as "normal", unless medically necessary. But I also don't conflate unemployment and poverty. So you may very well decide to stop working at 30 regardless of your savings and prior income -- assuming you're guaranteed access to all necessities by default.

As far as I'm concerned, the only reason you should ever end up in poverty is if you have extremely unreasonable spending habits (e.g. gambling), and even then it's most likely an indicator of an underlying psychological or social problem than "your own fault".

<comment><USER13> In today's world, absent social security or other income programs, $1MM in a post-tax account provides about $35K in income over a 60+ year projected period of non-work (aka "retirement").

This is about 75% of the median income for families of 4 and has to cover everything (including rent, unless you take some of the $1MM and buy a house, reducing your safe withdrawal rate accordingly).

That's a fairly spartan existence, IMO. Proponents of basic income systems (which are certainly appealing emotionally and viscerally) need to account for how to give every family the purchasing power of millionaires, forever. That seems economically a non-starter, regardless of whether or not I think it would be awesome to live in such a world where every precious hour of my labor could be devoted to improving my family's comfort and overall lot in life instead of more than half of it going to "run the family".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I would love to see these types of metrics for other domains. I think any technical question about some distribution across the american population will produce results that contrast with reality, simply because people don't know how to reason about mathematical distributions or large numbers very well. This isn't to say that America does not have an issue with economic inequality, of course.

</comment><comment><USER32> It isn't a zero sum game. The top 20% doesn't take away 84% of the wealth pie and leave the rest to us. They also create a lot of it. If fact, if the top 20% can create enough wealth for the whole country to live a good quality of life, that is not a bad thing.

</comment><comment><USER33> Three things define American culture when it comes to economic values, decisions, and status:

1) The Lottery Effect "...the other main reason Americans seem so unperturbed by the widening chasm between the rich and everyone else is what I like to call the lottery effect. Buying lottery tickets is clearly an irrational act -- the odds are hugely stacked against us. But many millions of us do, because we see the powerful evidence that an ordinary person, someone just like us whose only qualifying act was to buy a ticket, wins our favorite lottery every week. For many Americans, the nation's rowdy form of capitalism is a lottery that has similarly bestowed fabulous rewards on the Everyman." \- [http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/03/21/rising- wealt...](http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/03/21/rising-wealth- inequality-should-we-care/the-lottery-mentality)

2) Last Place Aversion "that poor Americans' antipathy toward redistribution might be due not to their desire to one day be at the top of the income distribution, but to their fear of falling to the bottom. We show that humans have a deep psychological aversion to being in "last place" -- recall the shame of being picked last in gym class -- such that individuals near the bottom of the income distribution may be wary of redistribution because it could help those just below them leapfrog above them." \- [http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/09/19/do-taxes- nar...](http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/09/19/do-taxes-narrow-the- wealth-gap/tax-policy-and-americans-last-place-aversion)

3) The Just World Fallacy "The just-world hypothesis (also called the just- world theory, just-world fallacy, just-world effect, or just-world phenomenon) refers to the tendency for people to want to believe that the world is fundamentally just. As a result, when they witness an otherwise inexplicable injustice they rationalize it by searching for things that the victim might have done to deserve it. This deflects their anxiety, and lets them continue to believe the world is a just place, but often at the expense of blaming victims for things that were not, objectively, their fault." \- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just- world_hypothesis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis)

Hopefully articles like this will get more people to understand these things.

</comment><comment><USER34> We have an inequality problem in our own backyard: the disparity in equity between CEOs, SVPs/upper management, and rank-and-file employees.

I remember all the stories of how google made 1000 millionaires at IPO. Wonderful! They built a powerhouse and were rewarded. But Larry and Sergey had BILLIONs between them. Possibly more than all the rest combined. Two people (plus throw in Eric Schmidt and whoever else).

We all just accept this huge inequality and take it for granted, spouting some rationale about risk, etc. I do believe the founders and earlier people should have higher reward, but not at such extremes.

Every time an engineer joins a startup as employee #5 and accepts .5% of the company, they are promoting this huge discrepancy.

</comment><comment><USER35> Or it's far better than you think. What if the cause of the misconception of the true distribution is that standard of living is far closer than ever before, so the relative distance of wealth is less visible.

<comment><USER36> Seems more likely that it's the increased geographical wealth/income segregation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> "Work hard enough" doesn't mean the same thing it did in the middle of the 20th century. The amount of resources available to the everyman today is orders of magnitude larger, be it tips on frugality or ways to supplement income. They don't really expand upon it in this piece, but it feels like they're using it in the "older" sense, i.e. simply working your job dutifully and being conservative with your money.

</comment><comment><USER38> At least some inequality is the result of our choices. Meaning, Google's new CFO is going to make 70 mln. But, how many people would like to be CFOs? CFOs work crazy hours and have insane amount of responsibility - many people wouldn't want that tradeoff. So, should we somehow normalize inequality numbers for this phenomenon ?

<comment><USER39> RNs work crazy hours and have an insane amount of responsibility. Should they make $70 Million?

<comment><USER38> no, because many more people want to be RNs and enjoy being RNs than CFOs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> On this topic, I almost always concur with these people: [http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/tag/inequality/](http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/tag/inequality/)

</comment><comment><USER41> Alternative title: Humans are bad at estimating things on logarithmic scales, and probably don't adequately factor in things like student loans and mortgage debt when estimating the wealth of the "poor"

My title is much less catchy.

</comment><comment><USER42> The youtube infographic video doesn't work: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM)

</comment><comment><USER43> Is it just me, or does the article contradict its own conclusion?

> They asked about 55,000 people from 40 countries to estimate how much > corporate CEOs and unskilled workers earned ... the patterns were the same > for all subgroups, regardless of age, education, political affiliation, or > opinion on inequality and pay

> One likely reason for this is identified by a third study, ... that suggests > that our indifference lies in a distinctly American cultural optimism

If 55,000 people from 40 countries make the same poor estimate of the reality of inequality then surely the affect of American cultural optimism is insignificant?

<comment><USER44> I think the keyword is "indifference." While everybody miscalculates the CEO - unskilled pay ratio, the article is implying the indifference caused by "American cultural optimism" is what prevents us from changing it.

<comment><USER43> That may well be true but there is a difference between 'ignorance' and 'indifference'. The former is relatively easy to measure but the second is not. In fact the study on social mobility that supposedly demonstrates this indifference doesn't mention the word. It simply shows ignorance of American's understanding of social mobility but does not compare these findings with populations from other countries.

Let's say that American's perception of social mobility was found to be significantly skewed relative to that of other populations'. Would that show more or less indifference? You could argue that the 'American Dream' cultural thinking leads more Americans to believe that the poor can become rich and at the same time more passionate about ensuring that that is indeed the case. The fact that it blinds them to the reality does not imply that they don't care.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Europe is unequal, not quite as much as the US, and yet they are implementing austerity. Why? Because capital needs to flow to where it is most useful. If it does not your economy suffers and everyone loses.

</comment><comment><USER46> Wow. Scientific American has really gone off the rails.

<comment><USER46> I suppose I could have been clearer.

This is a well-intentioned advocacy piece. It would be at home on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, the Washington Post or even the Wall Street Journal. It seems much of the reporting in SA has gone the way of editorializing the flavor of the month rather than reporting on well, science.

I miss that.</comment></comment>


Student invention grows hundreds of 'mini-brains' at once - <AUTHOR> https://spectrumnews.org/news/student-invention-grows-hundreds-of-mini-brains-at-once/ <comment><USER2> >"They [high school students] know more than we do about programming and 3D printing, all that cool stuff," he says. "They can make a design in a very different way than how we were trained."

I think this is an important statement. Kids tinkering in their basement have knowledge to do great work, but are often overlooked because of their age or education.

<comment><USER3> This exactly.

Back when I first started taking client work, I had plenty of trouble securing contracts because owners/execs saw a kid at the table, not someone who was going to solve their problems for a respectable amount of money. This was always the result of prospective clients insisting to have a video call/meet prior to any work being done.

Quickly after, I strongly refused any situation that would give away my age. I'd be lying to say I didn't receive a lot of opposition but when your chance of securing a deal is sub 10% and tons more time wasted, it's easy to just drop the prospect.

By now, my age is (for the most part), no longer a deal-killer, but I still usually do the same thing unless they're referred by an existing client. It's a huge timesaver.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't mean to belittle what the kid has done. It's an actually amazing accomplishment, for anyone of any age.

But it calls to question a problem. Is there a major issue with cross- disciplinary collaboration within the medical and academic spaces? I would think a mechanical or electrical engineer would consider this to be a fairly trivial application of the tech, yet the medical community seems to be hailing it as a ground-swell.

<comment><USER5> It may be, but I'm more concerned with the poor treatment the kid got initially, getting ignored like that. Even if you didn't think he was serious, would it have killed you to refer him to what you thought would have been a more appropriate channel rather than ignoring him?

<comment><USER4> I don't know. I think I understand the viewpoint. I get emailed by random people all the time. I usually reply to them, and try to be encouraging, unless I'm super harried and it just slips through the cracks. But, as far as I can tell, none of them have really turned into anything. Usually, they end up ignoring _my_ email. There's been dozens over the years and it probably would have been a better use of my time to ignore them.

<comment><USER6> Could you send a form letter inviting them to verify that they are serious?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Earlier this year, someone from Reddit asked me for advice on classifying some tricky medical image data (CT/MRI/SPECT of healthy vs Parkinson's patients), an area somewhat related to my PhD research. The guy was very knowledgable and had already made a lot of progress. I asked him which lab he was doing his thesis in. He replied to say he was a high school student.

I'm seriously impressed with what these students are capable of these days.

</comment><comment><USER8> That's... amazing. He just took something from the artisinal to mass production stage so quickly! I wonder how many applications like this will emerge in the next decade, that no one has even considered?

</comment><comment><USER9> >"But unencumbered by the constraints of a doctoral thesis, high school students have the time and energy to innovate"

Does that seem sad? Maybe doctoral programs should include a year of lab-time after your thesis so you can work on innovative projects.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this ethical. I know there are other people who are growing mini(should call them micro, by their size) brains, but considering the fights against abortion in US, I wonder if law makers approve of this.

<comment><USER11> Well, its just another example why the eSC = human argumentation is BS. A human is a fully developed nervous system, not some cells. Given some vectors, we could create iPS from pretty much any body cell and then probably a human from that (if we had a sufficient bioreactor). You can also let them divide, seperate them and now you have 2 - (some big number) humans. Cells or organs are no humans. People that think that cells are the same as a grown human may have a ethical problem here, but honestly, thats their problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> >"My thought was, okay, let's just wait. If he is serious, he's going to ask me again," says Song, professor of neurology

This is a horribly destructive attitude, that promotes salesmanship over technical talent.

<comment><USER11> I totally agree (and at the same time assume that just the story he tell now, he probably just ignored it because he gets hundreds of emails a day. When he got the third he may have thought: I should say something before he spams me the whole day). Its a typical strategy that works as long as not everyone is doing it.

<comment><USER12> And they're certainly going to be doing it now!</comment></comment></comment>


About Drums: the physics of overtones - <AUTHOR> http://circularscience.com/about-drums <comment><USER3> It's a great article, but the piano tuner in me must correct a detail about "typical musical instruments" such as pianos. The overtones are not necessarily perfect multiples of the base waveform and this is called inharmonicity.

In fact, this is part of why a piano sounds like a piano and guitar sounds like a guitar.

For any piano and especially the upright, the bass strings are actually too short to produce any vibration of the main frequency, the only thing you are left with are the overtones and our brains fill in the rest.

And that brain fill is actually happening across the entire range of the instrument, our brain latches on to specific overtones depending on interval, and the piano tuner (electronic or human), must compensate for inharmonicity in that range.

This means the bass must be tuned lower than the middle which in turn is tuned lower than the upper regions.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inharmonicity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inharmonicity)

[http://www.precisionstrobe.com/apps/pianotemp/temper.html](http://www.precisionstrobe.com/apps/pianotemp/temper.html)

<comment><USER4> > In fact, this is part of why a piano sounds like a piano and guitar sounds > like a guitar.

My understanding is that it is a bit more complex than that, literally!

The the final waveform is a not just

W = sum(a_i * f_i) = Psi

where a_i is the amplitude and f_i are the fundamental frequencies.

It is actually

W = sum(a_i * f_i + sqrt(-1) * (b_i * f_i))

      = Psi + i * Phi

Loosely, the imaginary part plays a significant role in making an instrument sound like it.

Of course, the brain fills up a lot of stuff that is still a mystery but the elec keyboards can set the a_i, b_i to change from "guitar" to "reed organ".

<comment><USER5> That is way too simplistic as well, as this model is time invariant. Most instruments, due to physical nature of excitation, are variable in both frequencies and phases over time.

It is the main reason why modelling physically is the best way for realistic results right now - lossy lumped finite element models typically - <USER2> waveguides are one of such models.

In such a model you can incorporate nonlinear damping and resonance functions over time at desired accuracy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you want to learn more about sound design[0], you should check out Syntorial [http://www.syntorial.com/#a_aid=AudioKit](http://www.syntorial.com/#a_aid=AudioKit). It's an interactive software synthesizer that teaches you in like an afternoon more than just about any book or video on the topic.

This tutorial series is also illuminating but it's almost too detailed [http://sonicbloom.net/en/63-in-depth-synthesis-tutorials- by-...](http://sonicbloom.net/en/63-in-depth-synthesis-tutorials-by-sound-on- sound/)

You might also be interested in AudioKit [https://github.com/audiokit/AudioKit](https://github.com/audiokit/AudioKit), a (macOS|iOS|tvOS) framework for audio synthesis and processing.

[0] sound design is such an interesting field, as it's both vary artistic but also extremely math/physics/cs/stats if you want.

<comment><USER7> Cheaper solution would be to try the open source Pd (PureData) in combination with the free "Programming Electronic Music in Pd" book [1].

[1] [http://www.pd-tutorial.com/english/index.html](http://www.pd- tutorial.com/english/index.html)

<comment><USER8> Or SuperCollider or any demo of a standard synth plugin dropped into a free VST host (like dropping a demo version of Massive [0] into Reaper [1]... though Reaper technically not free).

[0] [https://www.native- instruments.com/en/products/komplete/synt...](https://www.native- instruments.com/en/products/komplete/synths/massive/) [1] [http://www.reaper.fm/](http://www.reaper.fm/)

<comment><USER9> Don't forget [http://overtone.github.io](http://overtone.github.io) for (live) coding your synths, filters and effects!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One item on my TO-DO list is hooking up an electric guitar to an oscilloscope and frequency analyzer and do a video and/or blog post about the applied physics of heavy metal guitar sound.

There are tons of tricks employed in guitar playing to create interesting sounds by manipulating harmonics, by both the guitarist and the effect and amplifier signal chain.

Most guitarists that use these tricks are completely unaware of the physical phenomena involved. And the non-guitarist physics geeks always enjoy when I give a short demo with lots of distortion and artificial and natural harmonics tricks.

<comment><USER11> I'd look forward to seeing that - I teach music tech and having done that with a class singing a note and seeing the different harmonics in each person's voice is interesting, and seeing that applied to a heavy guitar sound would be interesting - as you say, there's lots that players do that they don't realise they are doing, and it will also give an understanding of what's possible to those who would then take that on board and use the techniques uncovered by it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well,

Recently I've been trying to figure out what is special about mridangam and was wondering if I needed to do some analysis myself. Fortunately, I happened to run into CV Raman's papers analyzing the physics/acoustics/wave forms of a mridangam that are well worth a read.

He first wrote his short paper in 1920 in Nature (almost 100 years ago) [http://dspace.rri.res.in/bitstream/2289/2042/1/1920%20Nature...](http://dspace.rri.res.in/bitstream/2289/2042/1/1920%20Nature%20V104%20p500.pdf)

his fundamental thesis/analysis is that the way the mridangam is built is special in that produces harmonic tones (integral multiples of frequencies) which is highly unusual for drums therefore giving it the ability to sound uniquely special, accompany vocal well and to be played in a smaller, softer setting.

A good blog delving into all of this including some cool youtube videos at the end on wave spectroscopy demos using talcum powder (related to raman) are at [https://croor.wordpress.com/2010/11/10/cv-raman-on- drums/](https://croor.wordpress.com/2010/11/10/cv-raman-on-drums/)

A longer version of his paper from proceedings of IIS published in 1934 is here: [http://dspace.rri.res.in/bitstream/2289/2047/1/1935%20Proc%2...](http://dspace.rri.res.in/bitstream/2289/2047/1/1935%20Proc%20Indian%20Acad%20Sci-A%20V1%20p179-188.pdf)

Figured some of you would be interested in this.

<comment><USER13> I have always wanted to understand the result in this paper, since it is one of the first major publications of the first Indian to win a Nobel prize in science. Can you point out to some more basic acoustics?

I've wondered about what similar results hold for Idakka [1], a drum played in Kerala, and the talking drums of Western Africa [2].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaozNblda54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaozNblda54)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4oQJZ2TEVI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4oQJZ2TEVI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Folks at University of Edinburgh are doing some super cool stuff on physically modeled audio, including drums.

[http://www.ness.music.ed.ac.uk/archives/systems/3d-embedding...](http://www.ness.music.ed.ac.uk/archives/systems/3d-embeddings)

</comment><comment><USER15> A bit related (though much more theoretical): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_the_shape_of_a_drum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_the_shape_of_a_drum)

</comment><comment><USER4> Fun fact: the waveforms shown are bessel functions, the daddy of sine (and cosine).

</comment><comment><USER16> I was really in to Supercollider a long time ago, and I remember there were synths floating around on the mailing list that included big arrays of weird looking values, and they somehow made drum sounds. My brain is remembering that they were called eigenvalues, but I tried searching and didn't find much. No idea how someone figured out or calculated the values. I think they were impractical to calculate at runtime in supercollider.

</comment><comment><USER17> Many similarities between drums and radio frequency cavities. The drums are more interesting due to the nonlinearities of the heads and air inside.

</comment><comment><USER18> OK, now I have a Cowboy Mouth song stuck in my head. Is there any better live drummer than Fred LeBlanc?</comment>


We Sold Pando - <AUTHOR> https://pando.com/2019/10/23/we-sold-pando/ <comment><USER2> Pando failed as publication with last article from June and before that for a year or so all articles were written by Sarah so no money for journalists. It's not so much selling publication as selling web site with residual google traffic.

I am sad - I was subscriber at one time and attended a few events. Lots of good content a few years ago. Good journalism is expensive and Sarah failed to make finances at Pando viable. Now competition for subscriber dollars is intense with theinformation, business insider, digiday, etc and ad dollar will never support niche publication with no unique audience like Pando.

<comment><USER3> > Lots of good content a few years ago

I'd dispute that. I followed for a few months but the incessant valley navel gazing dried up my interest pretty quickly. It wasn't a great publisher in the great scheme of things even with Lacey's TechCrunch credentials. And to be honest I'd also stopped reading TechCrunch et-al back around 2012/13 even before she left. Maybe at the age of 52 I've outgrown this kind of tech "journalism".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "An acquisition is always a failure" — Pando, 2013

"An acquisition, or an aqui-hire, is always a failure. Either the founders failed to achieve their goal, or – far likelier – they failed to dream big enough. The proper ambition for a tech entrepreneur should be to join the ranks of the great tech companies, or, at least, to create a profitable, independent company beloved by employees, customers, and shareholders."

[https://pando.com/2013/04/02/an-acquisition-is-always-a- fail...](https://pando.com/2013/04/02/an-acquisition-is-always-a-failure/)

<comment><USER5> By a random columnist (Jake Lodwick) at Pando, not Sarah Lacy herself.

<comment><USER6> I didn't know what Pando was so I went to the about us page and saw this:

[https://pando.com/2012/01/16/why-i-started- pandodaily/](https://pando.com/2012/01/16/why-i-started-pandodaily/)

"As a founder, I have a personal goal that's just as important and just as core to our culture: I do not want to sell this company. [....] So let me put it this way: Selling is not success to me. If I wind up selling, I've failed in some way. We didn't get as big as we should, we didn't execute on the opportunity or I didn't hire the right team and got too burned out."

<comment><USER7> Sarah Lacy made it quite clear in the post that her heart was not in the game anymore, and that she had become as cynical as other bygone journalists. She isn't selling for money, she's selling because she doesn't want to do the work anymore. You can call that failure, but I would call it resignation.

<comment><USER8> She listed not wanting to do it anymore as one of the three ways she could fail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > It's a place where I've been sexually harassed more times than I can > remember. It's a place where I've been lied about, where VCs have arm- > twisted editors to fire me, where billionaires have threatened those doing > business with me to cut all ties. It's a place where I've had people turn on > me again and again and again simply for doing my job. It's a place I've been > betrayed by people I trusted. It's a place where one-time friends threatened > my children because I wrote about things they did.

Wow. I hope she writes a memoir of her time as a journalist. We need to hear what she has to say because this is a side that I have not yet experienced, and hopefully never will.

<comment><USER10> You sound surprised the rich and powerful are buddies who gang up on anyone who threatens their position!?

Harvey Weinstein and the tricks with his money and network he pulled is a current good example of this. But, it's been going on forever in every sector(tech to entertainment to etc) yet sometimes karma comes around and bites them accordingly.

<comment><USER11> I agree with OP, surprised Silicon Valley has such people

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I briefly tried following PandoDaily after Sara's public exit from Techcrunch, but it quickly got kinda... boring and pointless. Also, I recall there were way too many posts about themselves and their feuds and quarrels with people (It was years before Uber affair).

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm sad to see them go.

I think Pando really demonstrates how hard it is to make money in contrarian journalism. Not just investigative journalism, which is expensive, but it shows us the danger of going to market with a contrary voice.

The real money is media made amplifying corporate press releases and telling people that what they believe is basically correct. I miss the days when alcoholic, misanthropic reporters were the mainstay of newsrooms. They may have been SOBs, but we still need them.

We all say that we like to have our assumptions challenged, and many actually do, but it seems too few are willing to actually pay for it.

<comment><USER14> In what way is Pando remotely contrarian

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Pando failed cause it was a tad to much outrage spewing instead of more informative tone (though not like super outrage machines Buzzfeed or Breitbart)

Paul Carr was so incredibly negative it was just hard to read. There is a difference between being skeptical and calling out BS, and just being pure negativity 24/7.

This being said, its very hard do quality journalism and make money. I am glad they tried, there was some decent quality stuff.

</comment><comment><USER16> > Thank you in particular to our amazing first amendment attorney, Roger Myers > of Bryan Cave.

This is actually the most surprising tidbit to me. How in the world was Bryan Cave representing them without any conflicts of interest? They're huge!

</comment><comment><USER17> For someone unfamiliar with Pando, what were their big scoops that brought such heat?

</comment><comment><USER18> I wanted to check out BuySellAds but Ublock wouldn't let me.

</comment><comment><USER19> Interesting parting shot: [https://www.chairmanmom.com/about](https://www.chairmanmom.com/about)

</comment><comment><USER20> So what happens when the time comes to call it quits on a "news website" business? How does the new owner drive traffic to a site when the articles are all old and out of date?

It's not like a web app of some kind that does a recurring business function (e.g. email subscriber management) so novelty doesn't matter, and new features are not needed every single day.

</comment><comment><USER21> Haha, yeah, no shit she is quitting journalism. You come away from this article thinking they just sold the next Google, but as a simple look at the front page reveals, it's simply a failed media startup that was likely sold for no more than the domain name is worth.

<comment><USER22> I think most people were aware of Pando's failure going into this article... which I believe she assumed or didn't bother rehashing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> How much did it self for? Did investors make money? Strange that this wasn't commented on.

<comment><USER24> If you sell your company to another company named BuySellAds, you can be pretty sure the investors didn't make any money. it sounded like a firesale.

<comment><USER25> Don't they park domain names? I remember trying to buy a domain name and coming across that name a couple of times.

<comment><USER26> No, BuySellAds is an independant ad network. They focus on helping publishers sell campaigns direct to advertisers with their platform and own a few different brands like Carbon Ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Only reason I remember Pando was from the War Nerd moving to that site. Though they hid everything behind a paywall, so I didn't stay for long.

<comment><USER22> Same, I was introduced to War Nerds through them and it was before I was used to paying for journalism. I wouldn't have thought twice about it now.

<comment><USER27> I always thought of it as the Ames/War nerd thing; everything else attached to it was pretty worthless. I don't recall them ever breaking a story, or publishing anything of note and won't miss them at all, as long as Ames republishes his work somewhere else.

<comment><USER28> I remember cancelling my subscription when he moved on and getting a "No, seriously. Fuck you." departure page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not the startup income pooling company for baseball players..

</comment><comment><USER30> Never heard of Pando, wondering why I should care, if anyone could give brief insight into why it's significant?

<comment><USER31> "wondering why I should care" is at least passively a toxic comment. At least take the time to click on the link before making a comment like that. Or just ignore the article.

<comment><USER32> It's an abrasive phrasing of a legitimate and, if you zoom out, apparently sincere question. "Toxic" is an overstatement.

<comment><USER31> The sentence works without asking "why I should care?":

"Never heard of Pando, wondering if anyone could give brief insight into why it's significant?"

Including the abrasive phrasing when it is not needed is toxic and not helpful for polite discourse.

<comment><USER32> Assuming bad faith is more damaging to discussion than dismissiveness. Your using the word "toxic" to describe the comment is more toxic than the comment itself.

Ed: if you had led off with

> The sentence works without asking "why I should care?"

then no one would be quibbling with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Seems better to read the source blog post than BI's clickbait aggregation of it: [https://pando.com/2019/10/23/we-sold- pando/](https://pando.com/2019/10/23/we-sold-pando/)

<comment><USER34> It's not clickbait aggregation, it's a coherent summary of a long rant. At worst, it could be challenged as copyright infringement or plagiarism.

<comment><USER35> The link has been changed. Here is said coherent summary of the long rant: [https://www.businessinsider.com/sarah-lacy-is-selling- pando-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/sarah-lacy-is-selling-pando-and- quitting-journalism-2019-10)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Ah who can forget Paul 'Genius Journalist' Carr that when the Snowden story was breaking was making fun of Ed and doing his best to downplay/bury the biggest story in years with an avalanche of bullshit. I also see that he wrote a book titled "Bringing nothing to the party: Confessions of a new media whore". That's one thing you got right, Paul.

Not surprising "pando" got sold to ad peddlers given the caliber of their editorial staff.

</comment><comment><USER37> I read one of her books, it was bad.</comment>


Make mainframes, not war: how Mad Men sold computers in the 1960s and 1970s - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/make-mainframes-not-war-how-mad-men-sold-computers-in-the-1960s-and-1970s/ <comment><USER2> The ad on the third page is the best. Look for "Advertisers tried to make lugging an Osborne 1 micro-computer look easy."

[http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2012/05/osborn...](http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2012/05/osborneguy.jpg)

According to Wikipedia, Osborne 1, the first commercially successful portable microcomputer, released in 1981 weighed 10.7 kg (23.5 lb).

4 MHz Z80 CPU, 64 KB of RAM, and two 5¼-inch floppy drives, which if upgraded to "dual density" ones each gave access to up to 180 KB on its floppy.

<comment><USER3> I have trouble comprehending the tiny greenscreen on that as being useful in any way.

<comment><USER2> 24 lines of 54 characters, luxury. :) I've programmed on the Z80 computer with only 32 characters per line (although bigger). Not to mention my HP calculator with even much less. Or keying in the machine instructions bit-by-bit without the screen at all, see another post.

And that Osborne had a screen with 5 inch diagonal, more than my current mobile phone. Now I've counted, I see only 16 lines on it horizontally, but the aspect ratio is not the same. I can imagine nobody working on that Osborne was able to sit straight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A&E's TV series 'Halt and Catch Fire' (IMDB rating: 8.2) picks up the story in the 80's:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_%28TV_serie...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_%28TV_series%29)

Season 1 is available on NetFlix.

</comment><comment><USER5> I actually worked on Univac 9400s in the 70's. It was pretty cool. Here's one in the process of being assembled:

[http://kyber.ca/rants/UNIVAC%20history-3.php](http://kyber.ca/rants/UNIVAC%20history-3.php)

True programming skill comes not from how big your equipment is, but what you can do with what little you have.

<comment><USER2> And I've actually entered the machine instructions by flipping switches on this Burroughs:

[http://www.silogic.com/PEPE/photos/PEPE%20B-1700.jpg](http://www.silogic.com/PEPE/photos/PEPE%20B-1700.jpg)</comment></comment>


How do you debug your JavaScript tests? - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to write some tests for react app.
The experience seems horrible. How am I even supposed to debug these?
using react-testing-library
```<p><pre><code>  import React from "react"
  import { render } from "react-testing-library"
  import App from "./App"

  it("renders welcome message", () => {
    const { getByText } = render(<App />)
    expect(getByText("SIGN IN")).toBeInTheDocument()
  }) </code></pre> ```
cool, then what? putting a debugger in there does nothing.
do you really go through the hoops of opening up a window, dev tools, re-running etc... It doesn't work consistently for me.
can't find much good online. do you have any good resources to suggest?
I'm starting to feel like switching jobs and just focusing on back end development. <comment><USER2> `debugger` only triggers a breakpoint if you `node inspect <file>` - [https://nodejs.org/api/debugger.html](https://nodejs.org/api/debugger.html)</comment>


Show HN: Zorro, a service to keep your IDs private - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rodrigodiez/zorro <comment><AUTHOR> OP here: just wanted to submit this to have some feedback regarding the idea and the code.

Insecure internal IDs is a problem that quite a lot of companies I've worked for have so I just decided to have some fun solving the problem!

<comment><USER2> > Important: Zorro is under heavy development at the moment and under any > circumstance its usage in production is recommended

Does this mean _not_ recommended? ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha! You are right, apologies for the poor grammar. Fixed! :)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Automatically track time spent on Git commits - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/git-time-metric/gtm <comment><USER2> Is this doing the same thing as www.wakatime.com?

<comment><USER3> Yes, it's tracking time the same as [https://wakatime.com](https://wakatime.com) but assigning time to commits based on the files you edit while WakaTime doesn't match files edited to files changed in the commits, it assigns all time between two commits to the more recent commit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks interesting, but without support for Mercurial it's not a viable option for me.</comment>


MarkdownPicPicker-Add pic to Markdown in 3 seconds - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kingname/MarkdownPicPicker <comment><AUTHOR> This git is an example:![]([http://7sbpmp.com1.z0.glb.clouddn.com/MarkdownPicPicker2.gif](http://7sbpmp.com1.z0.glb.clouddn.com/MarkdownPicPicker2.gif))

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> As I am in China, the two picture hosts may not be usable in your country. I hope you can help me develop the uploader for this project. I have writen the How-To in the Readme.

Thanks.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deploy text changes to iOS app without a deploy? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Ship a file with your app bundle (could be JSON, whatever you want) with all of the strings you'd want to be dynamic. Then on each app launch, check if it exists in the Documents directory, and if not, copy it to the Documents directory.

Place the same file somewhere web-accessible (an s3 bucket, for example) at a stable URL you can hard-code into your app. On each app launch, attempt to download this file and replace the existing one on disk with it. You could set a reasonable minimum time threshold before checking again (such as once per 24 hours), but this probably won't be an issue.

After you've got that set up, change every hard-coded string in your app to read from this file you've downloaded. This works like localization, where each string has a key to identify it regardless of language.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, spot on. We're using this approach for our Android app.</comment></comment>


Deleting Large Objects in Redis - <AUTHOR> http://www.redisgreen.net/blog/deleting-large-objects/

<comment><USER2> By the way, antirez is already working on a lazy deletion of large objects: [http://twitter.com/antirez/status/626406286083670016](http://twitter.com/antirez/status/626406286083670016)</comment>


Running your software stack native on OS X / Ubuntu - <AUTHOR> I made this:
https://github.com/mattbillenstein/ve
And I've been using something like it at a few different companies for awhile now.  I know it's not sexy Docker stuff, but I'd be interested in hearing what people think.
For playing around with new tech or working on a new project, I install just this one thing -- development on OSX, then deploying to Ubuntu/AWS is a snap. <comment><AUTHOR> and github is down...</comment>


Ask HN: How to handle catered lunch perk directed at specific group of employees - <AUTHOR> The satellite office I work at here in San Jose recently began a dedicated, twice-a-week catered lunch program. Before, this had mostly been an adhoc thing where the people in the office itself had ordered food/expensed it.
The issue I have is that I found out the proteins that will be included week-to-week will consist of only chicken or vegan/vegetarian options. No beef, lamb, pork, etc.
According to an office administrator this is because people in the office are either vegetarian or "chicken only".
I think having a free occasional meal perk is nice and I appreciate that we have one in the first place as some don't, etc. But personally I have some allergy-type issues concerning chicken (food hypersensitivity is the only real term to describe it), so I mostly avoid it except when there's absolutely nothing else and no time to get food elsewhere. And even so, having variety is nice.
But it seems like the protein options are the way they are based on the employees here at the office.
I get that employees aren't required to take advantage of perks, but when said perks are specifically for a subgroup of coworkers within the office it's a little frustrating..
What should I do? <comment><USER2> Maybe this is a little gruff but politely tell the office admin that you have a chicken sensitivity and eat the veggietarian. You apparently are the only person in that office that is t happy with the arrangement. Perhaps after a few weeks you could request a change of menu.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, my entire team feels the same as well as at least a couple other coworkers in the org who work out of this office.

But yes, I was told 'everybody' in this office is chicken/veggie only. I don't think a poll or survey ever went out about it unfortunately.

But I might try emailing the office admin and see what happens.

<comment><USER2> Maybe ask what the budget is and then propose additional choices that meet the budget. This way you save work for admin so perhaps easier to make it happen.</comment></comment></comment>


How the NSA could stop sucking and be awesome instead - <AUTHOR> http://teddziuba.com/post/58735980543

<comment><USER2> What is it that makes US citizens so gung ho on spying on _other_ countries but get all upset when they are being spied on?

Why should it be ok to have warrant-less surveillance of all the people in Spain (for example) but Texas is right out?

By seeing the rest of the world as the enemy and by not respecting the rights (as enshrined in the privacy directives of the various nations) of every citizen of every other country on the planet the US is placing itself in a position where sooner or later the rest of the world will start to see it as the enemy.

Maybe that's the goal, I don't know anything about what goes on behind the scenes other than what's leaked but I think this is a very bad development that could backfire.

America is fast losing its benevolent and 'on our side' image. It may not be all too visible from the other side of the world but people elsewhere are shifting their stance in relatively large numbers and that's as far as I can see uniformly negative.

The NSA could stop sucking and be awesome if they not only stuck to their charter of providing intelligence on 'persons of interest' but did that in the narrowest way possible and only _after_ they obtained specific warrants.

Remember the ruckus over that spy plane downed in China?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident)

What do you think would be the US response if the Chinese, the Russians or even some Latin American state would fly spy planes right off the coast of Washington, New York or LA?

This goes way beyond the NSA, an article along the line of 'How the USA could stop sucking and be awesome instead' would be a much needed refresher. After 9/11 the US had immense political capital and most if not all of that has been spent by now and the general worldview of the US has slipped from 'friendly' to 'possibly hostile'.

Writing this isn't going to change anything, I realize that. But I really wished we could get out of the 'us and them' phase.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is very constructive. I think this post could be expanded a bit when it comes to key signing and basically ELI5 the concept to make it crystalline why this would be useful and why it would still be private. (It gets the point across, to be sure, but it could be more accessible to less knowledgable folks by being more explicit in marching out its explanation.)</comment>


#tap_if - a new type of conditional for Ruby - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bnorton/tap_if

<comment><AUTHOR> Instead of assigning a variable or bloating the length of your statements, use this method to to return the caller and only execute the block if the condition passes.

User.where(:email => email).first.tap_if(:present?) {|user| user.send_update }

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> the magic is here: <https://github.com/bnorton/tap_if/blob/master/lib/tap_if.rb></comment>